Supermicro A2SDi-H-TP4F Review 16 Core SoC With Power Consumption

At STH, whenever a new generation of server CPUs comes out, we always like to start with the top end SKU. The Supermicro A2SDi-H-TP4F is an embedded motherboard that sips power and houses something special. Onboard is the Intel Atom C3955 which is the top-end SKU of the new Intel Atom C3000 series codenamed “Denverton.” This new generation offers twice the cores and anywhere from 30-60% more performance per core than the C2000 generation. Beyond raw CPU cores, Supermicro has taken full advantage of the SoC’s capabilities to provide top-end networking and storage options on the platform.

Update 2017-26-08: Supermicro let us know that we tested a sample for validation. The shipping version of this motherboard will have the 16-core Intel Atom C3958 CPU. We will be updating our review soon with the shipping version. Here is our video overview of the updated version:

Test Configuration

Our test configuration is very similar to what we used for our Intel Atom C2000 series reviews.

We did get the chance to test the platform with Intel Optane 32GB, Toshiba XG3 512GB M.2 SSDs (Optane pictured) and 4x 32GB RDIMMs. Like the Intel Xeon D-1500 series, one can use up to 128GB in 4x 32GB ECC RDIMM configurations.

Supermicro A2SDi-H-TP4F Overview

Measuring 9.6″ x 9.6″ the Supermicro A2SDi-H-TP4F is a compact mITX motherboard. That means it will fit in a myriad of enclosures from small table top towers to short depth rackmount enclosures.

Supermicro A2SDI H TP4F Overview Top

The one caveat we want to point out in this design is that it is intended to have chassis airflow over the heatsink. The Intel Atom C3955 is a powerful processor at 32W TDP it cannot be passively cooled by the stock heatsink.

On the subject of the CPU, here is a lscpu output:

Intel Atom C3955 Lscpu Output

We wanted to highlight two virtualization features. The 16-core Atom is powerful enough for lightweight virtualization so its feature set needs to be more robust than the previous generation. One example of how the new generation excels here is that it supports VT-d for device pass-through.

Supermicro A2SDi H TP4F BIOS VT D Support

Likewise, there is SR-IOV support with the embedded Atom platform which is an excellent upgrade over previous generations:

Supermicro A2SDi H TP4F BIOS SR IOV Support

In terms of RAM, there are four DDR4 DIMM slots that accept ECC UDIMMs and RDIMMs. We suggest using RDIMMs if possible. That is a major upgrade over the previous generation as it makes 128GB easily obtainable.

Supermicro A2SDI H TP4F Power And DIMMs

Before we proceed, power has two main options. First, one can use a standard ATX 24-pin power connector. Given this is such a low power platform, it will operate without issue even with a 150W to 200W PSU and a 20-pin power connector. Alternatively, one can use a DC power connection which is the four pin power header.

Moving along to the storage, the motherboard has something special. There are two SFF-8643 headers that each can handle 4x SATA III 6.0gbps ports. Further, there are four standard 7-pin headers, one is the orange connector Supermicro uses for SATA DOMs with power. Augmenting these 12x SATA III ports is a USB 3.0 Type-A internal header popular for embedded OS installations. The previous generation Intel Atom C2000 had two SATA III 6.0gbps ports and four SATA II 3.0gbps ports so this is a massive improvement.

Supermicro A2SDI H TP4F Storage

The SFF-8643 ports provide features such as SATA LED so and SGPIO so your enclosure backplanes can correctly display status LEDs.

Supermicro A2SDi H TP4F BIOS SATA 0 Controller

While the SATA ports may be great for boot devices and traditional hard drives, there are new form factors available. For example, m.2 NVMe drives are extremely popular. The Supermicro A2SDi-H-TP4F can handle up to M.2 2280 size SSDs. Along with the M.2 slot there is a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot that is open ended allowing longer cards to be used. Previous generation Intel Atom C2000 products could only utilize PCIe 2.0 so this is a significant upgrade.

Supermicro A2SDI H TP4F M2 And PCIe

The rear I/O is an array of two USB ports along with an out of band management Gigabit Ethernet port. There is also a VGA header.

Supermicro A2SDI H TP4F Rear IO

The real story in terms of I/O here are the four 10 gigabit Ethernet ports. There are two 10Gbase-T ports and two SFP+ ports so one can use different networking interfaces. For those STsalivatingsalavating over a high-speed Atom CPU with higher-speed networking, this is it. The Intel Atom C3000 series requires external PHYs which you can see covered by heatsinks behind the VGA port (10Gbase-T is the larger of the two.) The 4x 10GbE configuration is only available on the highest end SKUs. Here is an Intel Atom C3000 series SKU list and comparison for your reference.

Here is a view of the platform with four DIMMs installed along with a M.2 drive. In this case we are using an Intel Optane m.2 drive. Far from a supported configuration, but since it is a NVMe device, it does work. We are using the m.2 device instead of the Optane P4800X PCIe we tested months ago because using several dollar per GB storage on this platform is not the best balance. We are testing the m.2 version to see if that is a good caching device for the server.

Supermicro A2SDI H TP4F Configured Overview

The Intel Atom C3955 has the maximum High-Speed I/O (HSIO) lanes and networking options found in the entire Intel Atom C3000 series. The Supermicro A2SDI-H-TP4F utilizes every ounce of these features.

On the next page we will have performance, power consumption, and our final thoughts.

If you are building a storage or networking platform and want additional compute horsepower to run additional services, the Supermicro A2SDi-H-TP4F is a great option. Armed with the Intel Atom C3955 top of the line 16 core SoC, up to 128GB DDR4 ECC RDIMMs, 2x 10Gbase-T, 2x SFP+ and 12x SATA, this is a generational leap forward over what we saw with previous generation embedded Atom parts.

Patrick has been running STH since 2009 and covers a wide variety of SME, SMB, and SOHO IT topics. Patrick is a consultant in the technology industry and has worked with numerous large hardware and storage vendors in the Silicon Valley. The goal of STH is simply to help users find some information about server, storage and networking, building blocks. If you have any helpful information please feel free to post on the forums.

Nice review. I don’t see any AVX* features listed in `lscpu`. Can you double check which processors support AVX*? Also, is PCI passthrough now supported with the whole C3000 line? It wasn’t supported on C2000.

@Davi have not had a chance to test on 802.3bz. 10GbE is now our low speed network. On the 64GB RDIMM the set we had did not work. Looking to the SM HCL to see if that gets updated with supported 64GB modules in the future.

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